The Council Bluffs Fire Department (CBFD) provides a full range of life safety protection for the 60,000 plus residents who live in Iowa’s eighth-largest city. The CBFD’s 108 career personnel, including firefighters and paramedic-trained personnel, give emphasis to all aspects of life safety. This includes fire prevention, fire fighting, emergency medical care, technical rescue, hazardous materials mitigation, disaster response, public education, and community service.
Professionally trained staff is on duty at all times at five neighborhood fire stations strategically located across the department’s 40-square-mile jurisdiction.
The administration is so out of touch with the day to day operations and what it’s like to do the job it’s laughable. Frontline guys have to look out for themselves because admin won’t have their backs. Dept is understaffed and instead of hiring to address it, employees are expected to take more and more overtime or deal with rigs out of service, putting more stress on crews and making their job more dangerous while doing a disservice to the public due to delayed response times and lack of resources and equipment. They city refuses to address pay that keeps falling behind similar departments in the region despite heavier call volumes and increased work load.
The Council Bluffs Fire Dept used to be a great place to work. In the last few years morale has gone down hill as administration has created vindictive policies, sick time has been a big one, instead of dealing with a few people who abuse the system they have created policies designed to punish you if you call in sick. Firefighters are constantly being force to work overtime to keep rigs in service, due to lack of staffing. The work life balance is the worst I’ve ever seen since I began working here. Recently relations with the City have soured. Pay has fallen way behind all our local and state wide comparable’s. It’s getting harder to recruit and retain employees when you can’t compete in wages and benefit’s. All the concerns fall on deaf ears with the city council, who seem to view the fire department as the red headed step children. The city has not failed to increase pay and incentives for the police department, who seem to get whatever incentives they ask for. I would definitely recommend anyone who has a chance to test and work for any of the other local departments do exactly that.
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2 Reviews on “Council Bluffs Fire Department”
The administration is so out of touch with the day to day operations and what it’s like to do the job it’s laughable. Frontline guys have to look out for themselves because admin won’t have their backs. Dept is understaffed and instead of hiring to address it, employees are expected to take more and more overtime or deal with rigs out of service, putting more stress on crews and making their job more dangerous while doing a disservice to the public due to delayed response times and lack of resources and equipment. They city refuses to address pay that keeps falling behind similar departments in the region despite heavier call volumes and increased work load.
The Council Bluffs Fire Dept used to be a great place to work. In the last few years morale has gone down hill as administration has created vindictive policies, sick time has been a big one, instead of dealing with a few people who abuse the system they have created policies designed to punish you if you call in sick. Firefighters are constantly being force to work overtime to keep rigs in service, due to lack of staffing. The work life balance is the worst I’ve ever seen since I began working here. Recently relations with the City have soured. Pay has fallen way behind all our local and state wide comparable’s. It’s getting harder to recruit and retain employees when you can’t compete in wages and benefit’s. All the concerns fall on deaf ears with the city council, who seem to view the fire department as the red headed step children. The city has not failed to increase pay and incentives for the police department, who seem to get whatever incentives they ask for. I would definitely recommend anyone who has a chance to test and work for any of the other local departments do exactly that.